Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 654 Economic Control (Part [-])
Helping Cen Ling keep this matter a secret, Gao Wushi finally agreed. Although he still had a lot of doubts about whether Mo Chao was the murderer who poisoned Zhang Ren, but in the current situation, there is someone to suspect. Better than not even being able to identify the suspect.

As for whether the internal situation in Sicheng is straight or not, Gao Wushi basically believes what Cen Ling said. At least one thing, they did send Cen Yunhan to Guilin, and handed over such a big and important host. If there is no problem behind it, it is too unjustifiable up.

But if you believe it, you believe it, whether you want to help, or how to help, don't worry about it for the time being.The high-practical guy has only one basic point of conscience when doing things, which is whether it is good for the continuation of the Han Dynasty. At other times, his conscience is far less important than reason.

The so-called rationality, to put it bluntly, is about profit.The only difference from ordinary people is that the highly pragmatic talk about interests is no longer about money. At least in Guangxi today, he doesn't think anyone is worthy to talk about money with him.

Don't look at the famous name of "Sibo Tian Yang, Liangguang Cen Huang", but the name of the family is not based on wealth. In terms of wealth, the Wei Guogong family in Nanjing might be able to beat them, the four chieftain families, Is that useful as an egg?

Leaving aside the two families in Guizhou, let’s just talk about the Cen and Huang families. According to what Huang Zhiting told him, if these two families can unite and ignore the consequences, they can pull out [-] wolves in at most two months. When the soldiers come, they are all mountain elites who are serious enough to fight, what the hell is Wei Guogong's mansion comparable to?

However, if the Cen and Huang families are so awesome, if we talk about money... the court’s requirement for a year’s tribute to Siming Mansion is only 790 five taels of silver, and the requirement for Sicheng Prefecture is 40 taels (the area of ​​Sicheng Prefecture Big, and the Cen family is well-known, so they suffer in this regard), even if this is an indicator that does not count other "native products", it can also be seen that the two of them are in financial distress.

Even if the annual endowments of the Cen and Huang families are added together, it doesn't matter at all in Gao Yushi's eyes.Even a little exaggerated, Gao Wushi suspects that if all the chieftains in Guangxi are added together, the annual tribute may be more than 1 taels—up to [-].

2 taels, hehe...Tianjin Port does not count the income of the fleet, just sitting in the port area to collect rent, it can earn almost 3 taels in two months. After removing various expenses, it is still a little redundant. There is no problem at all with a monthly net profit of 1 taels.

2 taels of silver is nothing more than a two-month rent sale at Tianjin Port.

Therefore, Gao Yushi would never consider scrapping money from the chieftain as a profit. The most valuable capital on hand of the chieftain is actually two things: land and wolf soldiers.

The land is useless, at least for Gao Yushi. Not to mention that Gao Yushi basically doesn't know the advantageous minerals in western and southern Guangxi. Secondly, the traffic is not very convenient.

Relatively speaking, southern Guangxi, where the Huang family is located, is better. If you really want to have any advantageous products, you can take the Mingjiang River to Qinzhou, and then transport them to Guangzhou by sea, which can be connected with the high-level private port of Guangzhou.But he couldn't guarantee that the Huang family would cooperate with him honestly, so don't think about it for now.

As for the Cen family's land in western Guangxi, although it can also be connected to Qinzhou or even directly to Guangzhou through the Zuojiang-Pearl River system, that has nothing to do with Gao Yushi. way.

From this point of view, the only place Cen could be useful to Gao Yushi is the wolf soldiers.But the strength of the wolf soldiers is fighting, being pragmatic and not rebellious, what can the wolf soldiers do for him?
Therefore, the patrol system still has its advantages. People like Gao Yushi who have been involved in a wide range of industries can't find a foothold to form an interest alliance with Guangxi.

Eh, wait, wait, wait... an alliance of interests?Foothold?
Gao Wushi, who had just sent Cen Ling away, suddenly slapped his forehead and said to himself, "How can I forget what I am best at! Although the chieftain is not very obedient, it is because the Ming court treats the chieftain very well." It is only a source of orthodox name. Not only can the chieftain not get benefits from Daming, but he has to pay a sum of money every year, and he even has to deal with the imperial court at any time. To this extent, the chieftain is not only the My younger brother wants to help Daming with work, and even pays tribute... So he is obedient only because he can't beat 'big brother', and he is disobedient only because 'big brother' asks for too much?"

Gao's pragmatic thoughts suddenly came to life, and he thought to himself: Then, can I rely on profit to win over, and even have a certain ability to control the chieftain to a certain extent?
It's easy to win over, anyway, they are poor, and I'm not short of money... But just giving money is a fart of control?Unless they can control their economic lifeline.

But in terms of the current productivity of the Liangjiang Chieftains, their economic lifeline is nothing more than farming, and most of them are mountain fields. If you let me buy them, I have no interest in buying them. This way of thinking is definitely not working.

Then, how about creating a new economic lifeline for them, making this lifeline even more important than farming, and then controlling this lifeline?
Theoretically speaking, it should be feasible. The key question is what kind of "new lifeline" can replace farming, and it can be controlled by me...

The so-called control economy, in this era, is nothing more than two ideas: control production or control circulation.

Uh, I'm afraid it's a little difficult to control production. If the chieftain doesn't listen to the call, thousands or even tens of thousands of wolf soldiers will come over and control the production of the ass?Even if I set up mine protection teams and factory protection teams like I did in the northern "base area", I'm afraid it won't work very well.

After all, in the north, these mine guards and factory guards mainly guard against bandits, rogues, and thieves, and they are not government troops. Even in a large mining area or a large factory area, one or two thousand mine guards and factory guards are enough Yes, but if it was replaced by chieftain wolf soldiers, there would be tens of thousands of them, and I am afraid that the mine protection team and the factory protection team could not bear it.

From this point of view, we can only consider starting from the control of circulation.

Whether it is west of Guangxi or south of Guangxi, the characteristic is that it is mountainous. If the distribution depends on people carrying horses, tofu can be sold at the price of meat. Unless you open a soap factory yourself, how can you guarantee profits?Without profit, what new lifeline is there to talk about?But the soap factory can't come to Guangxi. How many pieces of soap can you sell with Guangxi's consumption capacity?Even if you want to drive, you can only drive to Guangzhou.

Therefore, in terms of Guangxi's geographical environment, the premise of the so-called control of circulation must be the control of water trade routes.Because the characteristics of Guangxi's water system are very clear, that is, except for a few rivers in Guilin that flow northward to Huguang (Hunan), almost all of the others flow eastward.

To the east, there are two ideas. One is that no matter where you come from, you will go to Guangdong by the Pearl River.Another way of thinking is to go to Qinzhou first and then turn to the sea.

Let’s put aside the issue of going to the Pearl River. As long as you have money, you can build a large fleet of ships to “compete with the people for profit.”Besides, the person who can say this is in the same category as him.

This is to control the circulation by controlling the transportation capacity. In fact, there is another way, that is, as long as the Xunzhou Prefecture, the confluence point of the two rivers on the left and right of Guangxi, is controlled, the river channel from the waterway to Guangdong will be locked.

It’s just that this requires the support of someone from the government. It’s certainly not a problem for Gao Wu when he was an inspector in Guangxi, but the inspector usually doesn’t last long. The priority is instead after controlling the fleet.

The real problem lies in Qinzhou.Qinzhou was under the rule of Lianzhou Prefecture, and the entire Lianzhou Prefecture was administratively owned by Guangdong and not Guangxi in the Ming Dynasty, which meant that the highly pragmatic Guangxi inspector had no control over Qinzhou.And at the same time, for this reason, Guangxi is now a serious inland province.

It is the best solution to transfer the Lianzhou government directly to Guangxi. Of course, Gao Pragmatism thought of this at the first time.However, this matter is a bit troublesome. Even with the energy of high-level officials in the imperial court, whether they can do it or not is between the two.

In fact, in the Yuan Dynasty, Lianzhou belonged to Guangxi, and this administrative division was continued when the Ming Dynasty first founded the country, but the good times did not last long.

At this time, since there were only Lianzhou and Qinzhou in the coastal part of Guangxi, the imperial court downgraded Qinzhou and assigned it to Lianzhou, and then transferred Lianzhou to Guangdong as a whole. Afterwards, the actions of preventing and eliminating Japanese pirates (pirates) can be unified.

Since then, Guangxi has said goodbye to the sea.

However, the situation after the transfer of Lianzhou Prefecture to Guangdong is not good, because this place is "the extreme west of Guangdong" for Guangdong. valued.

This has caused Lianzhou not only to lag behind in economic development, but also to have less and less population, and the coastal defense is not very reliable. When it should be invaded by Japanese pirates, it will still be invaded. Does he disregard the "core interests" near Guangzhou, but always come to your corner of Lianzhou?

Therefore, it is not that there is no voice in the court demanding that Lianzhou Prefecture be re-allocated to Guangxi.But there are two reasons why this voice has not become mainstream.

The first reason is that Lianzhou produces salt and pearls, and it is called "Jinshan Zhuhai, Tianzi Nanku" (this "Zhuhai" is not the other Zhuhai).The imperial court set up the "Guangdong Haibei Salt Division Promotion Division" and the "Secretary Sea Road Rectification Lei Lian Admiral Zhuchi Deputy Envoy" in Lianzhou Prefecture. Among them, the Salt Division Division has [-] salt farms under its jurisdiction, including the one belonging to Lianzhou Prefecture. There are three places.

This means that if Lianzhou is to be returned to Guangxi, not only will the corresponding administrative settings be changed, but it will also encroach on the interests of Guangdong—well, mainly the interests of Guangdong officials.

As for the problem of Zhu Chi, Gao Pragmatic is more confident in solving it.Because pearl fishing is a very dangerous occupation, pearl people often suffer casualties, and when it is not suitable for pearl fishing, they are forced to fish for pearls because of the needs of the court, which is even more deadly and injured.Therefore, it has attracted the attention of local officials many times, and the court of Shangshu asked for rectification—of course, the local officials mainly asked the court to revoke the "guardian of Zhuchi internal officials", and suggested that the army should also take care of it. The reason is self-evident.Now that there is a "sub-envoy to patrol the sea and rectify Lei Lian Admiral Zhuchi's Deputy Envoy", it can be seen that the civil servants are more powerful.

(End of this chapter)